Journalism Today

Chapter 10: Design and Layout

Overview

Good design is a vital part of contemporary publications. Designers should understand the basics of design and layout, such as the nature of common page elements and how to lay these out on a grid. They must also adhere to the basic design principles of dominance, unity, contrast, repetition, balance, and consistency.

The process of designing pages often begins with type selection. Designers may choose typefaces from seven categories—OldStyle Roman, Modern Roman, Text, square serif, sans serif, script and cursive, and novelty—although faces from the first four groups are most often used. Designers need to know appropriate sizes of type to use for different situations, as well as ways to package, position, and mix type appropriately.

Graphics such as rules, boxes, illustrations, and photos should be used only for specific purposes, such as to unify, separate, or call attention to elements on a page. When creating actual page designs, a designer should do an overall plan at the beginning of the year and post samples of it for the staff's benefit. Many newspapers use a modular format in which stories are packaged for better readability.

During layout, designers may build dummies, or full-size drawings of their pages, showing where all page elements will appear. When preparing dummies, designers should beware of "tombstoning," or "bumping," headlines and should ensure consistent internal margins. Specific page design begins with the placement of the main story, followed by the placement of the dominant element (graphic or photo), and then the positioning of other photos and copy around the dominant element. Double-trucks, designs that extend across a spread, follow the same general procedure but must be handled carefully. Columns may be the same width throughout a page or spread or may follow a minicolumn format, which varies column width according to a specific variation on a standard column width.

Although the same basic design principles apply to all publications, yearbooks and some magazines are designed mostly in spreads and need to be especially concerned with a spread's overall unity.

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